THE German Government has requested the
extradition of the Hitler historian David Irving on
charges of alleged racial incitement.

The move was disclosed yesterday by Mr Irving, 62, at the
High Court on the third day of his libel action over what he
claims is an international conspiracy to ruin his reputation
as an historian. If extradited and found guilty, he could be
jailed for three years.

The request to the Home Office concerns a lecture he gave
in Weinheim, near Stuttgart, at the invitation of the
right-wing NPD, at which he allegedly challenged Hitler's
blame for the Second World War and maintained that the
Holocaust had not happened.

After the lecture, made nearly ten years ago, the NPD
chairman Günter
Deckert was jailed, but a trial of Mr Irving was
cancelled when he failed to appear. A subsequent attempt to
summon him via the German Embassy failed after Mr Irving
left for the United States.

Mr Irving revealed the extradition request to Mr
Justice Gray as an example of the "hatred" and problems
he faced because of "repugnant allegations" against him. He
said that the court could find "his end of the bench empty"
one day if extradition proceedings interrupted his libel
action. The judge, sitting without a jury, said that he
would not intervene.[*] Mr
Irving said that he believed disclosure in the German press
24 hours earlier of the extradition proceedings was "not
just coincidence". The paper suggested it would have to be
dealt with quickly before the issue "ran out of time". In
Germany it is illegal to question the Holocaust.

Outside court, Mr Irving said:
"I have written to the Home Secretary warning him that if
they tried to serve the warrant on me I will prosecute
the Home Office for assault."

Of the Weinheim meeting, he said: "I was talking about
history and somebody asked me questions. Police were there
and made a record of what I said." In 1992, he said, he had
been fined £15,000 for views he aired at a subsequent
meeting in Munich, and was banned from Germany.

Mr Irving is suing Deborah Lipstadt, the American
historian, and Penguin Books, which published her Denying
the Holocaust. In the book she claimed that he was a "Hitler
partisan" who had twisted history by denying the Holocaust
occurred.

Mr Irving says that he has never claimed that the
Holocaust did not take place. He does, however, question the
number of Jewish dead and denies there was a systematic
extermination of Jews in concentration camp gas
chambers.

Yesterday he rejected an accusation that he had rewritten
history by portraying Hitler as a "merciful and benign"
dictator who wanted to save the Jews, and allegations that
he had deliberately mistranslated or suppressed documentary
evidence. The case continues on Monday.

As he left court Mr Irving was approached by a woman who
said that her grandparents had died at Auschwitz in gas
ovens - said by Mr Irving to have been built after the war
by the Poles. He told her: "You may be pleased to know that
they almost certainly died of typhus, as did Anne
Frank."

A
German court confirmed last night that the British
Government was formally asked to help in extraditing Mr
Irving five months ago on charges of incitement to racial
unrest after a speech in 1990 to a far-Right rally of the
National Party of Germany on the Holocaust (Roger
Boyes writes from Berlin).

Suggestion: Did this journalist accurately reflect
the day's proceedings? Check the
day's
transcript and
then...